it is proposed to introduce, without any further preface, a general description of the district which the writer was appointed to visit. The portion of Clerkenwell known in the City Mission as the "Cow Cross District," was occupied by the writer for a period of six years. Two hundred years ago, St. John Street, upon one portion of which the district abuts, formed the northern boundary of London. A battery and breastwork defended this entrance to the metropolis, at the previous period of the civil wars. It happened, although the circumstance was quite unknown to the authorities of the City Mission, that on entering their service, the writer was thus appointed to a district in the same parish, and but a very few minutes' walk— within view of the very spot of his birth. At that comparatively recent period, fields stretched around to the north and east, where all is now for several miles a mass of human habitations, filled with immortal souls. In describing and illustrating the Police Courts of London, the "Illustrated London News" makes the following observations respecting the neighbourhood: "We have mentioned the general character of the district, over which the Clerkenwell Court exercises its police control. Many of our readers are no doubt familiar with the densely-peopled, dirty, confused, huddled locality which stretches around the Middlesex Sessions House. Many of them have, we doubt not, been bewildered amid the dingy, swarming alleys, crowded with tattered, sodden-looking women, and hulking, unwashed men, clustering around the doors of low-browed public-houses, or seated by dingy, unwindowed shops, frowsy with piles of dusty, ricketty rubbish, or reeking with the odour of coarse food; lumps of carrion-like meat simmering in greasy pans, and brown crusty-looking morsels of fish, still gluey with the oil in which they had been fried. Many of our readers, we say, have probably congratulated themselves with a cosy, self-satisfied shrug, as they emerged from these odoriferous haunts into the broad thoroughfare, where the shops do not look like dens, nor the passengers ruffians and sluts. In Clerkenwell there is grovelling, starving poverty. In Clerkenwell broods the darkness of utter ignorance. In its lanes and alleys the lowest debauch, the coarsest enjoyment, the most infuriate passions, the most unrestrained vice, roar, and riot. The keeper of the "fence" loves to set up in business there-low public-houses abound where thieves drink and smoke-Jew receivers lurk at corners-brazen, ragged women scream and shout ribald repartees from window to window. The burglar has his "crib" in Clerkenwell-the pickpocket has his mart-the ragged Irish hodman vegetates in the filth of his three-pair back. It is the locality of dirt, and ignorance, and vice-the recesses whereof are known but to the disguised policeman, as he gropes his way up ricketty staircases towards the tracked housebreaker's den; or the poor shabby genteel City Missionary, as he kneels at midnight by the foul straw of some convulsed and dying outcast."* I am quite aware that the intention of the writer of this article is friendly to the Mission, but am not equally aware that my dress is shabby genteel. Such of the Missionaries, however, as have large families, and are destitute of private means, in consequence of demands upon their charity which are not to be resisted, find it difficult, with a very limited income from the Mission, to avoid a somewhat shabby appearance. * "Illustrated London News," May 22nd, 1847. Such is the condition of the district where the writer, by the sustaining hand of the Lord, was enabled to proclaim the Gospel from house to house, and room to room, day by day, during the past six years. Continually in the midst of fever and infectious disorders, breathing an atmosphere of filth and dirt, and at the time of the dreaded cholera nearly falling a victim to that disease, he was sustained by the good hand of his God upon him for six long years. As is well known to some, grace was given him to relinquish prospects and openings of more than competency, to embark in this Missionary enterprise this forlorn hope. He has never for one moment regretted the undertaking. A rich reward has been granted. It is a great promise which our Lord Christ makes, that no man shall make sacrifice for his service without being rewarded a hundred fold for that sacrifice, even in this present life, (Mark x.) In the writer it has been amply fulfilled. I have lacked no good thing, my soul has been greatly blessed with Christ's presence, and on carefully examining the large volumes which form my private journals and general records of Missionary labour, I find very many cases of persons who appear hopefully to have been brought to a saving knowledge of the Redeemer, instrumentally through Missionary visitation. They have in many instances, some few of which will be detailed, been, humanly speaking, the most unlikely persons, desperate characters, respecting whom the faithless might have seen no hope; but it is a small matter with the Almighty to apply truth with power to the hearts of the most hardened. He can "Speak with a voice that wakes the dead, And bids his guilty conscience dread It should not, however, be supposed that the results named have been effected without much that is trying to the flesh having been endured. The Westminster Auxiliary, in one of its addresses, remarks very truly :— : "It is little known to what an extent of disease, insult, and every kind of outrageous and disgusting conduct, those are exposed who devote themselves to visiting in such districts." It cannot be otherwise. Mr. Walker, one of the Westminster Missionaries, reports that he has scen as many as forty policemen beaten out of a |